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Though best known in the English speaking world for his short fictions and poems, Borges is revered in Latin America equally as an immensely prolific and beguiling writer of non-fiction prose. In "The Total Library", more than 150 of Borges' most brilliant pieces are brought together for the first time in one volume - all in superb new translations. More than a hundred of the pieces have never previously been published in English. "The Total Library" presents Borges at once as a deceptively self-effacing guide to the universe and as the inventor of a universe that is an indispensible guide to Borges.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

This appears to be the same book as "Jorge Luis Borges Selected Non-Fiction edited by Eliot Weinberger". Same translators, same table of contents, same first page of introduction. Different cover. I've got to say, this cover is much more exciting. "Selected Non-Fictions" has a classy but boring cover. It's great. Go read the reviews of "Selected Non-Fictions" and see how everybody likes it.

Borges often said that he was much more of a reader than a writer. And these essays are pervaded by his reading, not only the book-reviews and the portraits of authors, and the prologues to other work but each and every essay has its own rich bibliography. Editor and translator Elliot Weinberger provides a rich introduction not only to this present work but to the world of Borges as writer, and to the Essay as a form. According to Weinberger these essays were almost all written before 1955 the year that Borges went blind. They were written for a variety of different kinds of publications. Here in this book they are ordered chronologically. Weinberger says no other of the editions of Borges essays is so arranged.

Weinberger points out that in the United States the Essay has not been taken fully seriously by the Critical Literature - that in Latin-America that has not been the case. And so while Borges is famous in the English - speaking world primarily for his Tales in the Latin- American world he is as well-known for his Essays.

Borges is a philosophical writer and he thinks through fundamental problems not in order to give definite answers, but rather to broach possibilities. He makes Literature from Thought and Ideas and the play of Feeling and Language is more central to his enterprise than is the providing of a certain definite world-view. Still he takes positions, as in the first essay here when he takes apart the idea of a single fixed enduring 'self' and later on when he affirms the greater reality of Time than of Space.

These Essays are a great gift for any thinking person who loves Literature.There are so much Thought, Poetry and Beauty in them that they will bring great Joy to their readers.

This is a wonderful collection of Borges' non-fiction. It is a marvelous book to read and ponder. The only thing I could have wished for is a larger print font. I find I have to read this one with a magnifying glass. I suppose I shouldn't complain because there is SO much material. I will give this 5 stars just for the wealth of good reading it has to offer.